Sharing photos, videos, vintage images I've discovered, and -- occasionally -- commentary and thoughts from retired life and travels.

politics

Scaling back a bit

December 9, 2009

Read this first:

I made a decision after my last post on Climategate that I would scale back on my interest in anthropogenic global warming.

Before the emails and documents surfaced, I already knew there were issues with the some of the scientists and their data at East Anglia.  Unfortunately, it’s likely that similar issues related to climate change exist in other places.

I am now very satisfied that my doubt in anthropogenic global warming is justified and don’t feel the need to follow what’s happening with climate change quite so closely.

I’ve already stopped my Google alert on the phrase climate change, which has significantly reduced the amount of  items that I see in my feed reader.

This is my final post on climate change for the foreseeable future and I’m sharing here just a few of the many things I’ve learned before I get back to my regular posting.

I’m not looking to try to change any one’s mind, just share what I’ve learned.  I’ll still be learning as things show up in my feed reader – I just won’t be studying as aggressively .

.

Many scientists and others who are skeptical of anthropogenic global warming would like the answer to one question that, so far, has not been answered:

What evidence is there that more CO2 forces temperature up further?

While there is laboratory evidence that carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas and carbon dioxide and global temperature have both been rising, real world proof that CO2 has caused the rise in global temperature does NOT exist.

While, at times,  there appears to be a rough correlation between CO2 and global temperature, correlation does not prove causation.

Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some historical warming resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans. However, because of the physical properties of CO2, it’s done all the warming it can do.

Predictions of rising temperatures and the dire consequences of anthropogenic global warming are based on computer climate models.  The climate models include the assumption that global temperatures will rise as CO2 continues to rise.

Over the last decade, global temperatures have leveled off while CO2 continued to rise.  Temperature is trending below all of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predictions.

Joanne Nova, an Australian freelance science presenter & writer: Professional speaker, author, and former TV host, has prepared and published two excellent — and free — booklets on global warming.  The first, The Skeptics Handbook, has been translated by volunteers into many other languages, including German, French, Norwegian, Finnish, Swedish, Turkish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Danish.

Sceptics Handbook

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.

Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.

imageThe sun appears to have entered a less active period and is providing less warmth to the Earth.  The sun is in an extended solar minimum that was predicted to end in March 2008, nearly 20 months ago.  Since 2004 there have been 770 days without sunspots.  A typical solar minimum averages about 485 days.  Solar magnetic activity continues to drop.

A number of scientists are projecting that global warming is over, for now, and that global average temperatures will be dropping for the next 20 to 30 years.

World temperature profile with projected cooling if sun is at the beginning of a lull in activity of historical magnitude.

“Tricks” apparently have been performed on more climate data than just the tree ring proxy information.  The figure below shows the adjustments made to the historical temperature record of Darwin, Australia.  The blue lines show the values for the original, “raw” temperature data. The red lines are the official NOAA/GHCN  ( National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — Global Historical Climate Network) data  after the values have been “homogenized” and averaged.  The black line are the values for the adjustment that was made (uses the scale on the right of the figure).

“Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century. And the adjustment that they made was over two degrees per century …” – Willis Eschenbach, The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero

Before getting homogenized, temperatures in Darwin were falling at 0.7 Celcius per century … but after the homogenization, they were warming at 1.2 Celcius per century.

American climate sceptics are now demanding a thorough investigation of NASA’s earth science programme, including the possibility that instruments on its satellites have been “tweaked” to give a “correct” result, and pointing out that the agency has repeatedly had to correct its data, going back to the 1930s. The common factor between CRU East Anglia and NASA is the destruction or withholding of research models and data which, if they are reliable, should be their pride and joy – documentation that would secure these institutions’ place in history, like Einstein’s equations. Telegraph.co.uk

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Climategate fallout

December 1, 2009

Update: Britain’s University of East Anglia says the director of its prestigious Climatic Research Unit is stepping down pending an investigation into allegations that he overstated the case for man-made climate change.

The university says Phil Jones will relinquish his position until the completion of an independent review into allegations that he worked to alter the way in which global temperature data was presented.

Climate politics continue to be interesting.  Australia’s opposition Liberal Party has ousted its leader, Malcolm Turnbull, after the resignation last week of several senators from their “front-seat” positions.  The Aussie government’s climate change bill is now in jeopardy, raising the potential of an early general election in 2010.

The Climategate emails and documents are being investigated by a number of organizations, including an inquiry by Penn State University, where Michael Mann, creator of the discredited hockey stick graph – used by Al Gore in An Inconvenient Truth – is a professor. Inquiries are also under way at the University of East Anglia, the source of the leaked material.  Government investigations are either ongoing or pending and there has been at least one civil lawsuit filed.

climategateAt a minimum, the emails document the violation of UK Freedom of Information laws.

Many believe that the leaker was not a hacker, but, rather, was an insider acting as a anonymous whistleblower by leaking the emails and documents, including information that had been unsuccessfully been sought under the UK FOI statutes.

The emails are not the only incriminating material.  Computer codes and their documentation show fudged numbers and “blatant data-cooking” that tell a story of twisting reality to a desired view.

Many of the fantastic claims in the media about climate change are likely predicated on the same sort of skewed science.

An article in the Wall Street Journal titled The Climate Science Isn’t Settled, by Richard S. Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT gives a more balanced view of the state of climate science.

Al Gore on Saturday Night LiveClaims that climate change is accelerating are bizarre. There is general support for the assertion that GATA has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century. The quality of the data is poor, though, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the emails from the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) that have caused such a public ruckus dealt with how to do this so as to maximize apparent changes.

While I have been skeptical of global warming claims for quite some time, this Climategate fiasco appears to show  a conspiracy to doctor the evidence.

In my interest in climate change, I wasn’t looking for a conspiracy, just the truth.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

2814868958 9a95fc538d

I discovered just a little while ago that access to individual posts on this blog was unavailable and commenting was not available. This was because of something I did with some files on the server earlier today — not a web host issue. I knew that I should have checked after I was done, but didn’t.

It’s all back to normal now. It was only a 30 second fix, because it’s something that happened before and I knew where to look.

——

A couple of days ago, a park visitor from Spain was injured by a Yellowstone National Park bison (aka American buffalo).

“At approximately 11:25 a.m., the woman and her husband were using a pay phone in the Canyon lodging area with their backs to the road. According to witnesses, two bull bison walked down the road, passing within 20 feet of the couple. One of the bison left the road, walked up behind the woman and butted her into the air. The couple, who were facing away from the road, did not see the bison.”

The woman was taken to the Lake Clinic where she was treated for minor injuries and released.

This quite an unusual event. Bison are not usually aggressive unless someone has encroached upon their space. We have seen numerous instances where people have gotten way too close to these critters and nothing happened. Park regulations require that a minimum distance of 25 yard must be maintained from bison.

Bison are very, very common in the Canyon area.

We still hope to make it to Yellowstone this year. However, we may not have as much time available as we had originally thought.

——

Climate change legislation — The Waxman/Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act pass by a very slim margin today in the US House of Representatives. I actually watched some of the debate on CSPAN. I’ve got just a few comments.

  • They didn’t even have a properly collated official copy of the bill in the room during the debate. Three hundred pages were revised overnight and one of the House staff was in the process of inserting pages into the correct place in the “official copy” during the closing minutes of the floor debate.
  • The debate on the floor was limited to 3 hours for a bill that may be one of the largest tax bills in the history of the country.
  • While virtually every American would end up with higher energy costs as a result of the bill, as I understand it, it’s requirements would have negligible impact on global warming, if anthropogenic (human caused) global warming (AGW) were a proven fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
  • The premise of the bill is predicated on the assumption that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a proven scientific fact. The earth has been warming up until the last ten years. Global carbon dioxide levels have been rising, at least in part due to human activities, even during the last ten years as global temperature anomalies have been stable or dropping. While it would seem obvious to blame rising temperatures on carbon dioxide produced by man, there is no proof that continued rising CO2 will result in a continued rise in global temperatures. The predictions of rising temperatures are the product of computer climate models that assume that anthropogenic global warming is a proven scientific fact rather than an unproven hypothesis.
  • Our Representative, voted against it. I think I voted against him in 2008. He’s got my vote in 2010.

——

Climate change — I read material on climate change almost every day.

I am absolutely appalled at the gloom and doom, the-sky-is-falling alarmism that is in the media on a daily basis.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! last year.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

  • Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
  • Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
  • There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.
  • Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

    Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

  • Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
  • The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
  • Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
  • For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
  • The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century — 2000 to 2009.
  • The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
  • The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
  • Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
  • A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)
  • The heat content of the world’s ocean is dropping – Q = mc∆T. (The Global Warming Hypothesis and Ocean Heat)
day 22

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

sun_over_mist_on_river

You’ve heard the claims:

“The entire global scientific community has a consensus on the question that human beings are responsible for global warming.” — Al Gore

“In its most recent assessment, IPCC states unequivocally that the consensus of scientific opinion is that Earth’s climate is being affected by human activities…”The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change, by Naomi Oreskes, Science 3 December 2004: Vol. 306. no. 5702, p. 1686

I’ve looked for the consensus.  I haven’t found it.  I’ll let you know if I do.

Even if there is a consensus, it’s of little value if the underlying basis of the consensus is faulty:

It is amazing that some political leaders proclaim the debate over global warming is “over” when some of the meteorological community’s best minds continue to clash over the nature and magnitude of a phenomenon that could entirely offset the effects of anthropogenic CO2 emissions. (Climate Change Reconsidered , the 2009 Report of the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC), page 17)

The hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming and the predictions of future temperature rise are heavily dependent upon computer models that do not incorporate many of the significant complexities of Earth’s climate.  See The problem is in the modeling.

Is consensus science or is consensus politics?

1

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

Impressions on Climate

April 28, 2009

I used to accept that the Earth was warming because of rising concentrations of carbon dioxide, although I was a little troubled by some of the media buzz around it.  The electric power company I worked for had committed to limiting its carbon emissions at or below its 2000 levels, so there had to be substance behind global warming theory.

I’m not sure at what point I stopped simply accepting anthropogenic (human caused) global warming. I can say that for well over a year I’ve been reading a lot of climate change related material and have a much better understanding of the topic than I once had. My first blog post on climate was It’s not a hypothesis… It’s not a theory… it’s a CONSENSUS! eleven months ago.

Below is some of what I’ve come to believe and understand related to the Earth’s climate.

  • Anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis.
  • Even though anthropogenic global warming is an unproven hypothesis, it is likely that some warming has resulted from carbon dioxide released to the atmosphere by humans.
  • There is no proof that continued rise in CO2 will result in continued rise in global temperatures.

image

Carbon Dioxide Absorption Peaks

  • Carbon dioxide acts as a greenhouse gas by absorbing infrared radiation in three narrow bands of frequencies, (2.7, 4.3 and 15 micrometers (µM)), meaning that most of the heat producing infrared radiation frequencies escapes absorption by CO2.  The main peak, 15 µM, is absorbed completely within about 10 meters of the ground meaning that there is no more to absorb.  Doubling the human contribution of CO2 would reduce this distance. Reducing the distance for absorption would not result in an increase in temperature.
  • The science of climate change is not settled.  Science is never settled. There is always more to learn, more to add.
  • Consensus on climate change is not science.  It’s politics.  Science isn’t done by consensus, as I understand it.
  • For a scientist to be a skeptic on climate change is not a bad thing.  Scepticism and questioning are important aspects of science.
  • The Earth appears to have been cooling overall for most of this young century.
  • The reports of the danger to polar bears are premature.  They are also recycled over and over again.
  • The prediction of an Arctic free of  ice is  premature.  AMSRE-A Sea Ice Extent has 6 1/2 years of history. The sea arctic sea ice extent currently is higher than any of the other years at this point in the annual cycle. AMSRE-A (Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer – Earth Observing System).
  • Antarctic sea ice extent is getting larger.
  • A recent survey found Arctic ice to be thicker than expected.  (radiobremen)

{ Comments on this entry are closed }

“That Obama scares me.”

November 8, 2008

obama posterI overheard it the day before the election.

That Obama scares me.”

I tried to believe that his fear was of the changes that are going to occur as a result of this election.

I really would like to believe that.

But I know better.

It was fear of something different, of someone different.

“HE isn’t like us.” “HE looks different.” “HE sounds different.” “HE can’t be a real American.” “HE pals around with Bill Ayers, a domestic terrorist.” “HIS preacher teaches hate.” “HE’s a Muslim.” “I can’t vote for him, HE’s…, HE’s…, not white.”

THAT Obama scares me.”

THAT one.”

Despite the misinformation campaigns, the hate ads, the robocalls, and racial bias, the American electorate overwhelming elected THAT one — the SENSIBLE one — the RIGHT one.

Yes, WE can!

Yes, WE did!

The change is started.  It’s going to take some time.

Some people aren’t going to like it.

It’s not going to benefit everyone.

I’m not going to like everything about it.

But the nation was off course.

The nation needed a new heading and there will be a new hand on the tiller.

Yes, we can!

I’m not afraid of Barack Obama — Never was.

Note: This commentary is not intended to imply that all who voted for McCain and against Obama were racist.  In my view, race was not an issue for the majority of those who voted for the Republican candidate, but there were many voters who were influenced by race and/or the campaign ads and speeches that were designed to foster fear — and that is what this post is addressing.

{ Comments on this entry are closed }